INDIAN WOMEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22822, 1 September 1937, Page 7

INDIAN WOMEN

FIRST vote in march MANY OCCUPATIONS That the position of Indian women gf the "unorthodox" class was comgood wa3 revealed l>y .Miss Joan McGregor yesterday. 31 iss I.U----i g r egor, who coincss from Dunedin, .tons v/crkctl with the Ramabai 31 ukti .Mission in India for .'37 years, and it; at present on furlough in New Zeakmi. Women in liidia who wore literate now Jind the vote, a right which they exercised for the first time in .March this vear Miss McGrogor_said. They were, ]n fact, at present better placed than the men in this ,respect, for a man 'had to have passed the matriculation examination in order to vote, whereas' a woman had only to read and write, so that in some crrses a wife might he an elector while her husband was not. / couple of the, Ranees anil several women of the better class are air pilots," Miss McGregor said. "There j nro Indian women film stars —one studio is at Calcutta —doctors, lawyers ! and teachers." By tho Sards Act, j women might not marry until the ago { of 14, but this law had only been in I force for six years, and was still broken in many parts, although there were penalties for this. Among the orthodox Indians the old restrictions still held good, but among the high-class women who had joined the "Reformer" movement life was almost as free as in Western countries. These women were not necessarily Christian, but they had abandoned the old caste system. A - woman of the .Brahmin class, however, would never go outside her home without a companion, even if this were only a boy or girl of the family. Tho women had all kept to their racial style of dress, in India, and most of them still did their hair in the old way, though permanent waves were becoming fashionable-' among some of the students. In all-the big cities, the training colleges were filled with hundreds" of women, and both men and women attended the medical colleges at Poona and Bombay, and the teachers' training college at Poona. The Ramabai Mukti Mission was founded in 1889 by Pandita Ramabai. herself a widow, in order to help child widows, deserted child wives and unwanted baby girls, and its jubi'eo will be celebrated in two rears' time.